No new acquisitions for Tornator in 2009

Finland's Tornator group, which owns 12,000 hectares of forest in Romania which it bought in 2008, made no acquisitions in 2009 or the first months of 2010, but will not give up its initial target of getting to own 100,000 hectares in the next five to ten years. "We have already been operational on the Romanian market for a year. In January 2009 we started selling wood and we're now working at full capacity," said Zoltan Kozy, country manager of Tornator, in an interview with ZF. In 2008, several foreign investors including Cascade Empire, held by Austrian-born businessman Herald Schweighofer, operated massive land acquisitions in several areas of Romania. Unlike them, Tornator centred its purchases in the area of Brasov, but now Kosy says the area of interest has expanded, but acquisitions are conditioned on the area put up for sale. "We are not worried we haven't managed to buy anything. We're managing what we have now. There is no pressure," Kosy also said. Total investments the Finnish company operated in Romania top 40m euros, with the latest projects targeting forest roads. Tornator's wood sales revolved around 600,000 euros in 2009 and the target for 2010 was set at 1-1.5m euros.